S9 Ep77: Explore | A cyclist on the English landscape

The Cycling Podcast

News, Sports, Sports News

4.7 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2021

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Explore returns with Lionel Birnie travelling to the south coast of England to meet photographer and journalist Roff Smith, whose lockdown project was published in the New York Times as A Cyclist on the English Landscape.

The series of self-portraits feature Roff cycling in and around his adopted home town, St Leonards-on-Sea in Sussex. Roff is not used to staying in one place for long. Born in the US and having spent time working in Australia, his career as a photographer and writer for National Geographic has kept him almost permanently on the move – until the coronavirus crisis hit in spring 2020.

While tethered to home, Roff started getting up before dawn to capture photographs of himself riding through the early morning light and found that each day gave him a different perspective on the familiar.

To see more of Roff's work follow him on Instagram @roffsmith where he has published more of his self-portraits and his website The Art of the Ride.

The Tour d'Écosse
On Thursday (June 3), Lionel and Simon Gill are setting off on the Tour d'Écosse, a 13-day, 1,300-kilometre ride from Gretna to Dingwall in Scotland, visiting each of the 42 Scottish football grounds on the way. Follow their adventures with nightly episodes of Explore and by following the (slow-moving) dot at thecyclingpodcast.com

Explore by The Cycling Podcast is supported by Supersapiens and Science in Sport.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to Explore by the cycling podcast, powered by Super Sapiens.
0:16.6	Energy Management for Committed Appleeds and Coaches.
0:30.2	While Richard and Daniel are in Italy covering the giro, I've come down to St. Leonard's
0:34.4	On C in Sussex on the Thousand Coast of England to meet a travel photographer and cyclist
0:39.1	called Roth Smith.
0:40.7	Now a couple of months ago, a photo story in the New York Times created quite a buzz on social
0:45.8	media and you may have seen links to it and seen the article.
0:49.4	It was a series of self-portraits taken during lockdown called A Cyclist on the English
0:53.7	Landscape.
0:54.7	There's a link to the article in the show notes if you want to have a look and I recommend
0:57.9	you do because the photographs are absolutely stunning.
1:01.6	Roth wrote, I live in a faded seaside town called St. Leonard's On C in Sussex on the South
1:07.3	Coast of England.
1:08.6	If you've not heard of it you're in good company.
1:10.7	It's not on anybody's list of celebrated English beauty spots.
1:14.2	Indeed most of my riding is across flat coastal marsh or down at heel sea front promenades.
1:20.2	There's history here of course, this is England after all.
1:23.3	The lonely marshes I peddle across most days are where William the Conqueror landed his
1:27.3	men in 1066.
1:29.7	Otherwise except for being a haunt for smugglers, this stretch of coast dozed away the centuries
1:34.9	until the Victorians brought the railways down from London.
1:38.2	Now the feature caught my eye for another reason because St. Leonard's is where I lived
	...

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